Being an entrepreneur is hard. It’s not just the long hours, the incredible risk and the need to focus intently on today (not to mention the “today” six weeks/six months/six years from today). Entrepreneurship is a marathon and a sprint – run simultaneously. One of the quickest ways to burn out as an entrepreneur is decision exhaustion. In the first few years of building a business, you’re playing a never-ending chess game: every move you make can have a major impact on your success, your time and focus is limited, and the sheer number of possibilities (and the volume of information available to determine those possibilities) is exhausting. (You may remember Michael Lewis’ 2012 Vanity Fair
Every year, companies waste time, money and opportunities generating publicity that accomplishes little or nothing in terms of tangible business outcomes. Here are a few hard truths regarding publicity: Your audiences are unlikely to notice the exposure, or do anything about it. Even with content shelf-life driven by intelligent SEO management, there is simply too much information, too many online and offline media sources, and too little time in the day for your customers, prospects and referral sources to read, see or hear your message. And if they do get your message, there’s often little motivation for them to act on it. Publicity volume does not translate into business results. A single
The most noteworthy article on B2B selling was published in a 1966 Harvard Business Review article (#66213). In "How to Buy /Sell Professional Services," author Warren J. Wittreich explains the differences between extrinsic and intrinsic selling. Extrinsic selling occurs, according to Wittreich, when a B2B seller relies on successful work that's been performed for other customers, as a means to validate the seller's capabilities and potential ability to perform for a prospective customer. The weakness of extrinsic selling is that it requires a prospective customer to make a leap of faith: to believe the service provider will provide a level of success that matches or exceeds the work perform
